Quote o' the Day

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"I want to be the tripod, the light meter,
the motor drive."

—Eve Arnold on using the simplest equipment

From the materials of an 1980s Arnold exhibit
in Seattle, as remembered by Rob Atkins

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Question from Jona: "Hmm, I like holding the camera in my hands and doing manual focusing and winding on, but how hard is it to learn to shoot without a light meter? I have a Rolleicord and I hate carrying a separate light meter. Plus there are tons of great old cameras for B&W that do not have light meters. I could mess around with those if I learned how to shoot without a light meter."

Mike replies: I love it when this happens because...I actually have an answer for that, if you're willing to do a little reading. I shot without a light meter every day for six months a while back. It's actually very cool and quite freeing once you get used to it...and once you get going with it, sometimes you can arrive at exposures easily that would be difficult to determine with a light meter.

For instance, I have a shot of some delicate sunlit bare tree branches late in the day with lots of deep shadow behind the tree. It would have been tough to meter...an average reading would have been off because of the preponderance of shadowed area, but the tree branches were too skinny to spot-meter. What I did was to give my usual sunlit-subject exposure for that time of day, plus half a stop extra to make sure the shadow area had detail. It was perfect and made a lovely print. But even a sophisticated meter would have had trouble getting it right.

Comments

[ADG]

Great quote, I wonder how many of todays shooters will now suddenly start producing masterpieces now they have got their longed for large sensor compacts or DMD's :-)

[Pak-Ming Wan]

At first I read that as "I want to have the tripod, the light meter, the motor drive"!!!

Great quote.

Pak

[Paul]

A beautiful belief. I like the sense of empowerment that that attitude gives seems to give her, she sounds wilful and confident. Technology can do only so much.

[PWL]

Gotta admit, that's the way I like to work (and if you shoot live concert stuff, that's pretty much the way you have to work). One reason why I love the image stabilization function in the Olympus E3...

[Guy Batey]

Nice article - but I recently metered under a midday winter thundercloud in Berlin, and it was a full 9 stops below sunny sixteen. Way more the alleged 5 possible options in the GSOTPANWASTOTZSS article. I can't remember that many options!

[the other ian]

sunny 16 rule -- f16, film speed as shutter speed, bright day. Work down, if it's really important, bracket. End of story...

[Jona]

Thanks for the link to the article, Mike! I will definitely try it. I also just bought a Pentax MX and 50mm f/1.7 lens without ever seeing either in person. Boy is that a nice little camera with a huge viewfinder. I'm going to love shooting with it.

[Steve Jacob]

Love her work but this is arty b*****cks at it's finest. I mean, really.

[Mike Johnston]

Steve,
She wasn't an artist, she was a photojournalist, all the way.

Mike

[Dave]

"I want to be the tripod, the light meter, the motor drive."

I had a friend in college that took it one step further - he was the film. Every now and then, he'd stop, and I'd hear him say, "click". I wish him well. I hope his mental images have stood the test of time that my negatives have...

[Ed]

I have stopped using light meters alltogether since I've adopted sunny16 and have calibrated my vision accordingly. Now while using a lightmeter I was fooled on several ocasions (resulting in underexposed or overexposed Velvia and Provia slides). I have since then used my own eyes and it's like Luke using the Force to combat the battle drone on the Millenium Falcon. No fialures since, not using Delta 100, not using Pan F 50, not using Provia 100 and not using Velvia 50.....over 8 films exposed and no single problem (and yes I do not believe it myself but that is what happened). And them Mike had the same experience......so I say lets liberate photography from the chains of falty technology and start working with camera's that come batteries not included like my GSW690.

[the other ian]

Yes, Ed, we look at the needle and go, ooh, it has to be that, then, and get to the point where we can't do ANYTHING without the magic buttons, and a power supply. It's getting more and more tech, and less and less image I'm interested in looking at.

[rob grey]

Just shoot Portra; no meter - not even accurate exposure - required. It does like to be "overexposed," but it actually looks better that way. Hopefully it'll survive, even if Kodak doesn't.